£90k worth of garlic bread pulled from Tesco shelves across UK

Debra Fox

The products have been taken off by the supermarket giant because a proportion of them are “underweight”.

Around 70,000 packets of garlic bread slices, with an estimated worth of around £93,000, have been taken off shelves in Tesco stores across the UK.

An investigation has discovered that some of the breads were underweight – with trading standards officers in Scotland finding 39 packets of the supermarket’s own-brand product had net weights below the declared amount.

The discrepancy was found in Aberdeenshire across two visits – with one of the packs weighing less than 230g. The declared net weight is 290g.

Wilma Urquhart, a trading standards manager, said the service “takes these incidents extremely seriously”, and added: “We were pleased to see that the supermarket acted swiftly following the discovery.

“Our work is very important in protecting both consumers and businesses from unfair competition and the service will continue to work with both Tesco and Bakkavor to ensure legislative compliance.”

The producer of the slices - Bakkavor Foods - said it had taken steps to avoid a repeat of the problem and apologised for the incident.

A Tesco spokespman also said: “We take great care to deliver clear information for our customers so they can make informed decisions on the products they buy and to ensure that customers receive the stated quantity of product.

“We are disappointed that errors occurred with a very small number of product and we have worked with our supplier to ensure there is no repeat of the issue.”